The skies are expected to be alight with “natural fireworks” tonight as
astronomers predict that the best of the meteor shower will be at its most
spectacular.

People across the world have reported seeing shooting stars as the shower crosses the earth's atmosphere, but tonight and into tomorrow morning will be the best time to view it from the UK, with up to a meteor a minute, experts claim.

Although the Perseid meteor shower is an annual event, the Royal Astronomical Society believes prospects for this year's showing are particularly good.

A meteor is seen during the Perseids meteor shower over the one of the stones of the Avebury's Neolithic henge monument in Wiltshire (PA)

The natural occurrence, which is a result of material falling from the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near the Earth in 1992, will be visible to the naked eye.

Astronomer Heather Couper said: “Early tomorrow morning, that’s the best time to look at it, when the earth spins in to the swarm of stuff that comes down. It is going to be great this year."

She said that she had hear reports of people seeing 30 metres an hour in recent days, but added: “Tonight it is going to go up to about one meteor a minute I guess, if the sky is clear that is. It is going to be dark as the moon is going to have set by 10.30pm, so that is great.”

A meteor of the Perseids meteor shower burns up in the atmosphere behind a Catholic church near the village of Bogushevichi, some 100 km from Minsk, Belarus (EPA)

The meteors, commonly known as shooting stars, mostly appear as fleeting flashes lasting less than a second, but the brightest ones leave behind trails of vaporised gases and glowing air molecules that may take a few seconds to fade.

The Perseid meteor shower is active each year from around mid-July to late-August, but for most of that period only a few meteors an hour will be visible.

A Perseid meteor (R) streaks across the sky past the light trail of an aircraft over the Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank in Holmes Chapel (Getty Images)

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen's University Belfast said: “Comet Swift-Tuttle won't be visiting our neck of the woods again until the year 2125, but every year we get this beautiful reminder as the Earth ploughs through the debris it leaves in its orbit.

"Every meteor is a speck of comet dust vaporising as it enters our atmosphere at 36 miles per second. What a glorious way to go."

People looking out for the meteors may also get a glimpse of larger "fireballs", according to Brendan Owens, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

A long exposure picture shows a shooting star of the Perseids meteor shower burning up in the atmosphere over a beach in Anavissos, some 50 km southeast from Athens, Greece (EPA)

He said the Earth would pass through the comet's trail like a snowplough, with material of different sizes being trapped by the planet's gravity. The larger material may fall to earth as meteorites.

"If people are extremely lucky, we can see some fireballs, which are large chunks that burn up but don't completely burn up," he said.

"Sometimes it ends up with meteorites. There is a possibility of meteorite impact but it is very small."

He added: "They also come in different colours, depending on which elements are in the meteors."